You'd be amazed how warm Chinchilla is in the winter

In the late 30s/early 40s, the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture began researching "other crops" to add to and/or replace crops that became increasingly difficult to produce. One type of crop that had previously been unconsidered was fur. While there remained a demand for fur, there were less and less trappers that could harvest the fur from nature and it was determined that it was best for farmers to begin raising the sort of animals one would get fur from in capitivity. This included mink, red fox, silver fox, beaver, and raccoon. They attempted to raise other sorts of furry animals and hoped that consumer demand would increase. There are two notable rejected furry things. Although, their reasoning for abandoning these "crops" seems completely irrational to me.
1) Skunks- Although one can obviously de-scent a skunk in captivity, the black fur with white stripes surprisingly received little rise in demand from the general public.
2) Chichillas- Although one would think that this cute, fluffy, soft, grey-ish creature would make a fantastic coat, it seems that it too, was not in high demand. As you would think, many many small furry things were required to make a coat of any size, which made them less desirable already. Keeping many chinchillas in capitivity was filled with its own difficulties, making them far more trouble than they were worth.